‘Agreed!’ cried the scholars. ‘A la lanterne! à la lanterne!’
The Students Enlightening Maître Picard
CHAPTER V.
SAINTE-CROIX AND HIS CREATURE
The cry had not the terrible meaning which it carried a century afterwards, but it was sufficiently mischievous to offer but little relief to Maître Picard. In an instant he was borne off his legs, and hoisted on the shoulders of the scholars; whilst Philippe Glazer thrust a link into the fire, and when it was kindled preceded the procession to the door. Some of his companions dragged out a table and a chair, in spite of the rain, into the street; and forming a kind of scaffold they rapidly took down the lantern and perched Maître Picard, link in hand, upon its iron support, directly removing every means of escape from beneath him.
The poor little bourgeois was in a lamentable position. The ironwork of the lamp was anything but trustworthy; and, albeit a man of small stature, he was heavily inclined. With one hand he grasped his unenviable seat and with the other he sustained the link, not daring to put it out, for fear of some new infliction that his tormentors might invent.
‘Salut! Maître Picard,’ cried Theria, doffing his bonnet. ‘Who arrested Jean Sauval, at the Sorbonne, for taking the cloak from Bussi-Rabuten on the Pont Neuf?’
‘Filou!’ cried the bourgeois.
‘Who pointed out to the watch where François de Chanvalon, the archbishop, went, instead of to Notre Dame? Salut, bourgeois!’ cried Philippe Glazer, with another pretended obeisance.
And then the scholars joined their hands, and performed a wild dance around him.